


worst case scenario

by catchandsingthesuninflight



Series: 31 Days of Wayhaven [2]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: 31 Days of Wayhaven, Gen, hey we made it to day two!!, i just channelled all my anxiety for the verda route into this fic, is there a tag/genre for strife, mayhaps this is ooc but it's called worst case scenario for a reason, remember kids it's always Verda Appreciation Hour in my household
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26782735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catchandsingthesuninflight/pseuds/catchandsingthesuninflight
Summary: Lourdes and Verda have a talk.  It...doesn't go as she hoped.
Relationships: Female Detective & Soloman Verda
Series: 31 Days of Wayhaven [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949068
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	worst case scenario

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2: Monster
> 
> why is this the first thing that came to mind when i thought about the prompt? idk, but i went with it, and spat out this. is it the best thing i've ever written? hell no, but it IS finished, and that's what counts ;))

_Knock, knock, knock._ Lourdes has never been inclined to do it before, but it’s a fragile situation, and she doubts Verda would be happy about her barging in unannounced. There are memories of months ago that brush against the peripheral of her mind--coming in with a tea that she shouldn’t have, a file and a bloody hand, enthusiastic first greetings--but she pushes them away as quickly as they come. That was then, this is now.

“Come in,” Verda says eventually, the weight of his exhaustion bleeding into every syllable.

He doesn’t look at her when she does, but stays hunched over his microscope. Before it would have been endearing; he’s always worked himself to the bone, a habit the both of them had in common, much to Tina’s dismay. But Lourdes’s trained eyes easily spot the tension in his form, and she knows he’s not looking at something as much as he is looking away from her.

She shuffles on her spot by the entrance, ready to hightail it back up the stairs if necessary. This place is always so damn _cold,_ even when there aren’t any bodies to preserve. She shivers. Probably not the best thing to think about right now.

“Can we talk?” she asks finally, struggling to keep her hands by her sides. Open posture, even voice, neutral expression. She’s got this.

“I am a little busy at the moment,” Verda says. _Lie,_ Lourdes knows.

“It’ll only take a few moments,” she says. “Please. It’s important.”

He lets out a labored sigh, and slowly turns his chair to face her. He still can’t meet her eyes. “Yes, Detective?” he says stiffly.

“How long is this going to go on?” she asks, a little too forceful, a little too desperate. At the hardening of Verda’s expression, she immediately backtracks. “That’s not--you’re _allowed._ You’re allowed to be angry, and you’re allowed to be confused, because you just had the rug of reality pulled out from beneath you, or whatever, but--” she pinches the bridge of her nose, because this is not the best speech she’s ever given. She takes a deep breath. 

When she opens her eyes again, Verda _is_ looking at her, expression more hesitant than anything. Her words finally click into place. “If you want this to start making sense, if you want to get out of this at least a little bit like the person you were before, then you have to _talk_ to me. Because you can’t do it alone. Believe me, I _know.”_

Seconds of silence, where Verda doesn’t respond, his expression doesn’t change, his gaze doesn’t move. It’s more unnerving than anything. The suspense of it constricts Lourdes’s chest. Like she’s standing on the edge of a precipice, and doesn’t know whether the wind will blow her back to safety or send her forward to plummet into the vast gaping darkness below. 

When she blinks, the moment is gone. Verda is drawing back, his palms pressing into his eyelids. “You do, don’t you? Know, I mean.”

Lourdes lets out the breath she’s been holding. “Yeah.”

“How long?” he asks, bringing his hands down to look at her again, a little softer, a little more open. Some more of the tension releases from both of them.

“A few weeks before the end of the Murphy--the murder cases. When I--”

“When you disappeared those couple of weeks,” he puts together, and snorts when Lourdes nods. “A training seminar, they said.”

 _“Yeah,_ no, I got bashed on the head by a thrall,” she tells him with a sheepish smile. “A bunch of them broke into the station and destroyed just about everything? Also Ava healed a giant bloody wound right in front of me. And it turned out that creepy hospital lab technician I got your results from was actually a vampire murderer. So, yeah, a lot--a lot happened, for sure.”

At Verda’s stunned expression, Lourdes breaks out in laughter, and sees him let out half a chuckle himself. It’s not exactly as easy as it was before, but it’s something familiar, and that’s more than Lourdes could ask for.

“Uh, what’s a thrall?” Verda gets out, ever inquisitive as he is.

“Sort of like a, erm--a vampire minion?”

“Oh, of course,” Verda nods sagely, and they both lapse into laughter together. 

It shakes throughout both of them, tremors from the fault lines of their revelation that the world was not at all like they had thought. Lourdes laughs until her sides ache, laughs until she’s crying.

“You alright?” Verda asks her, rattling off the last of his hysteria.

“Fine,” she nods, maybe a bit too enthusiastic. “Absolutely perfect. It’s just--it’s all so absurd, isn’t it?”

“What is? The fact that all those monsters we spent our childhoods being afraid of, that our parents assured us weren’t real, actually are?”

“Hit the nail right on the head, my dear doctor.”

“It _is_ absurd. It’s a lot,” he sighs, then leans back to retrieve his mug of tea. “You must have a plan, though.”

Lourdes tips her head in consideration. “Less of a plan, more of an end goal.” She pauses to snort when Verda spits out a long-cold and oversteeped mouthful of tea back into the mug, and sets the whole lot aside. “Protect the humans from the supernaturals, protect the supernaturals from the humans. Etcetera, etcetera…what?”

Verda has gone still. His expression once again uncertain.

“Verda? You feeling alright?”

He licks his lips, slowly, before finding his words. “Protect the supernaturals, you said?”

She swallows away the sudden dryness of her mouth before answering. “Yeah, that’s what they’re called. ‘ _Monsters’_ is generally a bit of a no-go, unfortunately for you.”

He doesn’t find the jibe amusing as she hoped. Verda crosses his arms, his gaze flickering up at the fluorescent lights before meeting Lourdes’s eyes again. “I thought the plan was to drive them out of Wayhaven. Like you did with the disease, and the carnival.”

“Like I did with the--” Lourdes cuts herself off, breathes in a shudder of a breath, _one, two._ “No, I didn’t _drive them out._ The Agency and the Maa-alused came to an agreement. A treaty was signed, a compromise was met.”

“A compromise between who?” Verda asks, and the sharpness of it makes Lourdes flinch. “As far as I know, none of those people who were confined to the hospital for weeks got a say in any compromise.”

Lourdes digs the knuckle of her thumb into the corner of her eye. “Yes, obviously they couldn’t, they _can’t know,_ Verda. God knows how they’d react, they’d be afraid, or angry, like--like you seem to be right now, or they’d hurt someone, like--”

“Like how the monsters did to them? Like how they murdered two people?”

“No no no,” Lourdes says, quick as a rush of wind, though the chill that runs down her spine is significantly _colder,_ “not monsters. Supernaturals. And not _them._ One person. Murphy, or not Murphy, just--” she’s tripping over her words again, she curses herself out in her mind, “one vampire. One really horrible bloke. That’s all.”

“And the disease?”

“Yes, that was horrible, and wrong, but we talked it out. They--the Maa-alused, they _stopped._ It’s all fine now.”

“Is it,” Verda states, because it sure as hell isn’t a question. 

“Yes,” Lourdes answers anyway. Why is this place so _cold,_ why are the lights so bright, why do they buzz incessantly at the back of Lourdes’s head? She tightens her jaw against it all, but it does nothing to brace her. “Verda--”

“You are a _detective,_ Lourdes,” Verda tells her, coolly, incredulously. “Your job is to protect the people of this town. The _humans_ of this town, who have been living here since before _all this shit_ started happening.”

The shit that she brought, with her blood. Not that Verda knows that. She perishes the thought. Doubt won’t help her salvage this, if it’s even possible anymore.

“The supernaturals are part of this town, too,” she says, with all the conviction she has, and she has lots of it. Because after the last several months, she _knows_ how true it is. “They’re just people, just like any human. Just like us.”

“So you’ll protect them, too,” Verda nods, face gone hard and cynical.

“Yes, I will!” Lourdes nearly shouts, and tries to swallow the rising frustration back. “Why does it have to be either-or?”

“Wayhaven was a quiet town before all these--these _supernaturals_ came here, and now there are things happening that normal people can’t explain, that normal people _can’t_ know about or protect themselves from, and because of that they’re getting hurt. You’re just okay with that?”

“I’m not _okay_ with it,” Lourdes hisses. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to fix! You tell everybody about their existence, and what do you think is gonna happen? They’re going to go out and _lash_ out at as many supernaturals as they can, in fear, or in hatred, and then the supernaturals will retaliate, in fear, or in hatred, all because each side is so convinced they’re trying to _protect themselves._ But guess what? There are no sides, because we are all _just people,_ trying to get on with our lives!”

The ensuing silence after her outburst is much more oppressive and _empty_ than the uncertainty of the pause before. In this there’s a hostility, and the iciness that Lourdes feels isn’t just from the morgue, anymore. Her and Verda are at a deadlock, and neither of them will break it, out of stubbornness. Out of conviction.

Until Verda does. “I have a family, Lourdes.” 

Lourdes lets out half a breath, her eyes fluttering shut. “I know. I know, Verda.”

“And you can’t just expect me--” He swallows back anger, and fear. “If anything happened to my girls, to Eric, anything that I could have _prevented--_ ” He shakes his head, and, with a stony finality, “I won’t let that happen.”

Lourdes rubs the tips of her finger over her right closed eye. “Verda--”

 _“No.”_ His vitriol and _betrayal_ behind the single word makes Lourdes falter. “If you’re so eager to keep playing sides—and there _are_ sides—then go on right ahead. I’ll do what needs to be done to protect this town, and our people, like you should be doing, _Detective.”_

The title is like a slap to the face. Lourdes scoffs, and feels the bitterness rise in the back of her throat. _“‘Our people,’”_ she repeats, in a haze of acidity and despair. “You know they still call you _city boy_ behind your back?”

Verda straightens, his jaw set, eyes cold. Uncompromising. “You should go now, Detective.”

And what more is there to say? She goes, and the dread follows with her.

**Author's Note:**

> gonna be completely honest, i'm really not sure how i feel about this one, and so i have to write a happy fic with Tina and Verda in the future to compensate.


End file.
